My oldest decided that he wanted to be a pumpkin for Halloween, so a pumpkin we made! I started out with an old orange baggy sweatshirt, some green felt, black sparkly stiff fabric, and pipe cleaners. I also printed out a leave (3 different sizes), and a pumpkin face, cut them out and used them as my template.

For Christmas gifts I made a few more bow ties, but before I made them I had a chance to look at an old bow tie my Aunt made for my dad when he was in high school or college. If you haven’t seen my first post on how to make a bow tie, click the link for more details.

I tried to hand stitch the center part completely but found that didn’t really make much of a difference and was a lot of work. So once the bow tie is assembled I hand stitch the back ring to the neck strap, then when I get to each corner I use 3-4 stitches on the outside of the bow. I found that when I hand stitch this way they are less likely to move around.

A few days back I was experimenting with the different Bow Tie tutorials out there. I found that there is the basic “simple” one, then there is the actual bow tie that you tie. When I tried them both I decided that I really liked the more complicated one better; however, for kids I’m giving the simple one a trie first. Don’t mind orange, it was my “cheap” test material.

This is my first try at a simple one:

This is my first try at the more complicated bow tie, I actually created the pattern and tied it myself (that will be a later post as I DO plan to make some of these later). I do admit that I did have to YouTube how to tie a bow tie! Doesn’t it look really nice!!

To start with, I measured my son’s neck. It was about 11 1/2 inches, so I made my neck piece 14 inches by 2 inches. I should have made it 15 or 16 inches. I would recommend adding 4 or 5 inches onto the size of your child’s neck. You can also measure the neck of the shirt to get a better estimate, but if you do that you don’t need to add as much if you measure that way.

In the blog they used 12 inches by 3 inches for the bow tie part, but they found it was too long. So I decided to make my bow tie part 10 1/2 inches by 3 inches. The small piece I made the same 2 by 3 inches.

Now, on the ends of the neck part I like to fold one side in, then the other side, and use a chopstick or un-sharpened pencil to get the two corners.

See, nicely tucked in and ready to have the Velcro on it or how ever you plan to finish it. I like Velcro because it’s cheap and you can get a big roll that you can cut to size.

Now, like the blog post shows I folded the bow part like an accordion and put the middle ring around it. I then took the neck piece and pushed it in as I pushed the bow in.

Then I made sure the bow was in the middle of the neck piece so the velcro will be in the back. I also made sure the bow was center and just right. Once It looked good to me I took it one step further than the blog mentioned. I hand stitched all three parts together. I stitched the bow to the neck piece, then the neck piece to the center ring, then I moved to the other side and did the same thing. When I moved to the other side, I slid the needle through the back of the ring.

Here’s the back:

And here’s what it looks like on my son. I don’t like to put my kids face up on a public blog, so I zoomed in on the bow tie!

A few additional things I would like to note, the tighter the center ring is the more the bow tie will stay put. But if it’s too tight it’s really hard to put on. Also, when hand stitching I should have tried to make the stitches a little tighter. The bow tie doesn’t come apart, but the bow tie becomes off centered. So make sure the center ring is nice and tight, and the hand stitching is nice and tight too!

Enjoy!

*EDIT* I found more hand stitching was necessary to help keep the bow tie from becoming off centered. See this post for more details!

My son wanted to do some sewing, so as he is too young I thought he could help me make a tie for him. He picked out the fabric and had a blast watching.

This was a bit tricky, I didn’t print out a template but made my own template based on the basic shape. The first tie was too small, so I made a second one. To make the second one large enough I had to sew two pieces of fabric together. The two ties worked great because the smallest one fit his stuffed Tigger just right.

This project was great, I love making things for my kids and love finding things to make for boys. It seems there are SO many things you can make for little girls. As always every project I learn new things about sewing or the project in general, here is the list of what I’ve learned.

1. Using thin material is best. For the back of the tie I used t-shirt material with added stabilizer, that just seemed a bit too thick.

2. Getting the size right is a challenge, next time I make it I will be adding several inches extra, that way the tie can grow with him as he gets older.